Hoy
Encyclopedia : H : HO : HOY : Hoy
Hoy (from Old Norse há-øy meaning high island) is one of the Orkney Islands in Scotland.
The dramatic coastline of Hoy is what usually greets visitors to the Orkney Islands. It has extremes of many kinds: some of the highest cliffs in the UK at St John's Head; the impressive and famous sea stack, the Old Man of Hoy; some of the most northerly surviving natural woodland in the British Isles; the remote possibility that Arctic Char survive in Heldale Water and the most northerly Martello Towers, which were built to defend the area during the Napoleonic War, but were never used in combat.
The highest point in Orkney, Ward Hill, is found on Hoy.
The main naval base for Scapa Flow in both the First and Second World Wars was situated at Lyness in the south-east of the island. Some rather incongruous art deco structures nearby date from this period.
An unusual rock-cut tomb, The Dwarfie Stane, lies in a valley at the west of the island. It is unique in northern Europe, bearing similarity to Neolithic or Bronze Age tombs around the Mediterranean.
In Norse mythology, Hoy is the location of the never-ending battle between Hedin and Högni.
Gallery
External links
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.